It is a well known and standard practice for industry to remove particulate matter from a flowing stream of fluid by passing the fluid through a filter that entraps the particulates. More particularly, gases that contain smoke, soot and other particulates created by processes such as combustion of fossil fuels and the like, have been passed through woven or unwoven fabric filters for cleaning such gases prior to further treatment of such gases, or exhausting such gases to the atmosphere. Such filters may be referred to as “fabric filters”, or “bag filters”, and a plurality of such filters are used to provide “dust collectors” or “bag houses”, in which hundreds, or thousands, of such filter are used for filtering huge flows of contaminated gases.
Heretofore, tubular shaped fabric filters, i.e., filter bags, have been provided with a wire cage placed therein for maintaining the filter in an open condition for allowing gases to pass therethrough while trapping particulates on a surface thereof.
In the past, it has been traditional that such filter bags, and wire cages had various designed lengths in a range of up to approximately 12 to 14 feet (+/−3 to 4 meters), and a large filtering system, i.e., a bag house, might contain between 3,000 and 5,000 filter bags and related cages. A typical example of a prior art filter cage is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,905,529 granted on Jun. 14, 2005.